I have many PST files that I am trying to find all instances of a search term in for a court subpoena and then pull those out, preferably into another PST. I am looking for software that will let me do this quickly. I have Microsoft Outlook 2007 installed, but that will not work because it will only search through 1 PST file per search. We've tried X1, but thus far we've not been able to get it to return the read receipts that match the search term.

Does anyone know of any software that would help us? Preferably Windows-based, but if Linux-based software did the trick, I could persuade my boss to let me take my laptop.

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7 Answers
7

New to Outlook 2007 is the ability to
search multiple PST files at one time.
Any PST file (Archive Folders or
Personal Folders) can be searched
together with any others. This means
that if you're searching for a message
that you know you've filed away, but
you're not certain which file you put
it in, you'll be able to find it
easily with a single search.

How? Make sure that the data files
that you want to search are open (if
they are, you'll see them in the
Navigation Pane). Select All Mail
Items as the location for your
search and then select the files that
you want to search. All Mail Items
also appears at the top of the
Instant Search pane so that you can clearly see that you're searching
multiple files.

Another alternative is the good old LookOut for Outlook. You can easily and quickly search within multiple PST files with the LookOut add-in. Although it's old, you can still get it to work with Outlook 2007. This and this pages give the step-by-step instructions.

I used X1 for a while - it used to work very well. I now upgraded my computer to Windows 7 and would have to buy another license from X1. I decided to use Google Desktop - if you open your .pst files on Outlook (Go to File/Open/Outlook data file) and let your computer idle for a while, Google Desktop will index your emails on your .pst files. So far it is working fine. I still prefer X1's interface, but Google Desktop is very gentle on the CPU. At least on Vista, X1 sometimes would consume a lot of CPU resources.

I hate to be so vague, but I don't have my work computer in front of me at the moment. If I recall correctly, a "Search All Mail Items" button can be added to the toolbar at the top. I think this button will allow you to search all active PSTs (in other words, PSTs which are currently opened in Outlook, not merely archived PSTs). Again, sorry for the ambiguity, but I hope this helps!

I am using PSTViewer Pro from Encryptomatic LLC. It can open different types of email files such as .pst, .ost, .eml and .msg. It can also search email fields including Message Text,
From, To, CC, Subject, Date Range, Header.

We use Doc Discovery http://www.docdiscovery.net for running keyword searches on multiple PST files and the results are reviewable in its Outlook-style viewer. Not sure if anything will output into another pst file though. It doesn't need Outlook installed and as it is designed for lawyers the interface is very user-friendly ;-).